Caching is commonly used for improving performance on computer systems. Once an object is stored in a cache, subsequent requests for the cached object may be satisfied by the cache. Satisfying requests for an object from a cache may incur less overhead than regenerating or retrieving the object from a remote location. Slow performance coupled with a growing demand for Web services, may cause Web servers to become inefficient or unusable.
Caching offers a methodology for dealing with growing demands for greater throughput for Web and Proxy servers. Systems of clients and servers on the World Wide Web, for example, may use caching to improve performance. In some instances, Web server applications may perform slowly and inefficiently without the benefit of a cache. Without the benefit of a caching scheme, Web servers may become a system bottleneck. The underlying operating system running on a Web server, for example, may have performance problems impeding the throughput of the Web server. One technique for improving the performance of Web servers is to store frequently requested data (e.g. Web pages) in a cache. Retrieving data from the cache may require less overhead than retrieving the data from the Web server.